Tears in the Dark
by greypilgrim127
Summary: A collection of monologues from the Avenger's point of view. Includes Loki and Bucky. Rated T for angst and mild language.
1. Chapter 1 Red in my Ledger

Sin. Dark, disgusting sin. It's staining me, like grime on an old church window.

I've got red in my ledger. It's dripping red like a malfunctioning faucet leaks water. Trickling down, running down. The number of lives I've taken, slowly dripping in front of me. Haunting me, mocking me. I've killed and I've tortured.

The more I try to crawl out of this dark hole, the more I try to reach up to the light , the father down I fall. The more I struggle, the deeper I sink.

I haven't earned the right to leave. To even try to leave. I'm to far gone to even try to fix myself now. I can't do it.

But the longer I stay, the dirtier I get. The deeper I go. The worse I get. I can't fight these strangling vines of my own crimes.

I've saved hundreds of lives, by killing thousands. I've gotten my hands dirty. I've stained myself.

Not like the captain, always pure, always clean. No hidden past to be ashamed of, to drive him to madness. No reputation he has to fight to keep clean. No past he has to bury down deep. Deep enough to hide. But never deep enough to forget.

It doesn't stop. The haunting. The last look in a victim's eyes, the final cry of a falling human. It never ends. They go on and on, lingering in front of you, mocking you, reminding you. Driving you to insanity.

It's a cycle of torture, an endless tunnel of the dark. There isn't even the faintest pin prick of light ahead to give me hope. I'm too far back, too far in. Too many deaths by my hand. Too many I've sent past the barrier into the unknown.

I'll just have to wait until the day I meet someone stronger than me, and he'll drag me down to hell where I belong. To the endless torment which most definitely is waiting for me.

There's nothing I can do to make my wrong right. Can I ever wipe out that much red from my ledger? It's dripping—_gushing—_red. I lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. There's no way I can claim the lives I've saved as restitution for the lives I've taken.

The dirt and filth of my crimes is coating me black. I can't get out. I will never get out of this suffocating pit. There's no handhold, no ladder for me to drag myself free by. The only way out is to fly free, and I haven't earned my wings.

Help me. Please help me. I've swallowed my pride and I'm reaching out to you. Please. Take my hand and drag me out of the mire of my own wrong doings. I'm crying. I'm crying, and the tears are rolling down my face. Tears can't wash away the dirt. It just runs everything and makes me filthier.

I need rain. A heavy down pouring of rain to wash me clean. To wash me whiter than snow.

Please. Take my hand and bring me up to those clouds. I want to be clean. I want to be pure. I want to earn my wings and soar. I want people to look back, at the very least, and say Natasha Romanoff was a good person.


	2. The Winter Soldier

He was forged in a flame of war and deception. He was created in the glowing embers of HYDRA, dragged away from the side that previously claimed him. He was built in one eternal hiss for victory, like the endless sigh of a snake. Like an endless knife scraping slowly down a beam. He was made in a deluge of blood and death, fashioned out of man's endless thirst for domination and control. Molded for his mission.

His mission. Piece to piece they built him up for his mission.

No.

Piece by piece they broke him apart until nothing was left but the mission. The goal. The quest.

They took his arm and replaced it with a cold section of metal. They took his mind and replaced it with a frosty emptiness.

The tool HYDRA created, branded with the name Winter Soldier, was hollow. He was ready.

He was bent to their will, like clay in a potter's hand. Smashed and broken over and over again until he became obedient.

Things that do not bend, they told him, must break.

And so they bent him until he broke. They strapped him down to their machines and scraped the humanity from his mind, like a knife scrapes rust from a metal sheet. They wiped his brain clear of memory, like a sponge on a grimy window, like a rag through a pool of blood.

But vague words would arise. _Brooklyn, Steve, Bucky._

And so they scrubbed his mind clean again, with a searing, blinding pain. Forced to forget, forced into silence, the Winter Soldier was born. He was their weapon. A weapon not needed at the moment.

So he was encased behind glass.

_Put him on ice._

And the glass frosted over with tiny crystals of ice, reflecting his eyes.

He was a weapon forged in an unquenchable thirst for victory. He was a machine made to kill. He was not a human. They covered up his face, his eyes, the windows to his soul. They put a muzzle on his mouth to prevent him from crying out. They put a gun in his hands and an order in his mind.

The Winter Soldier knew. He knew that the order must be carried out, or he would feel pain. He would be punished, beaten, tortured.

An unreliable weapon, they told him, is a weapon that must be broken and must be fixed.

He was made of the bullets he fired, the knives he threw. He was built from the lives he took.

* * *

A blonde haired man was fighting back. He fought back well. But the only thing that held fear for the Winter Soldier was HYDRA.

"Bucky?" the man said.

"Who the hell is Bucky?"

Like a scream of pain, like the crash of a malfunctioning machine, something broke free again in his mind. The blue eyes threw a metal bar into the perfect clockwork of his mind. The words that came out of his mouth should not have come. He did not speak unless spoken to.

He should not feel. He cannot feel. This man was breaking him. He had to leave.

* * *

He was forged in a scream of terrified fear and despair, a hurtling fall hundreds of feet through blinding white snow. He was made of a fatal fall from a quivering mission.

_Bucky, no! _

There was a vain grasp of the hand, and a shriek of anguish. A haunting cry which was his own voice. The Winter Soldier did not understand what the memory was.

He was torn from his rightful darkness back into a shimmering ravine of snow.

He was dragged with his arm leaking blood into a scarlet trail behind him into the ice. He was awoken in violence and pain, to the fright of captivity, to the feeling of electricity drilling into his brain. The feeling of his raw flesh being sawed from his body. The feeling of sparks tingling in his arm. The feeling of hope being dashed against the concrete ground.

No, his arm is gone. He raises his new silvery hand.

_Sergeant Barnes…_

The cold voice brings fear. Who was Barnes? This was not right. He was a weapon. He was a tool. He shouldn't feel. He shouldn't remember.

_You are to be the new fist of Hydra…_

_Put him on ice….._

No, he was back behind the glass. He reached for the reflection of his petrified face before the glass crystalized over, freezing his scream, freezing his mind.

He lashed out with his arm, smashing a scientist to the end of the room. He was not behind glass. He heard the metallic click of a dozen guns trained on him.

He was scared. He was something before the scream, before the fall, before the pain. The man with blue eyes had said. He was a ghost now. But he was something before. A hand lashes across his face. It must be pain. It was supposed to be pain. Compared to the machine which took his mind, it is not pain.

_There was a man on the bridge. I knew him._

I knew him. He knew him. It was the wrong thing to say. The strapped him back down to the machine, placing a bit in his mouth.

But he had to hold on. Hold on to the scrap of memory that was blonde hair and blue eyes. The shining bit of mind that told him he had once been something before.

But they scraped his mind clean again.

And the pain told him he was only a ghost now, and never something before.

* * *

He faced the blue-eyed man again. But he had been remade in a thousand waves of pain, in an electrical surge of burning fire. He had been broken down again, bits and pieces of his mind traded off and replaced with fear.

_You know me…you're whole life…._

No. No! It hurt. The turmoil raged through the emptiness that should have been his mind. He was scared. The man said lies. He could only fight back.

_James Buchanan Barnes….you're my friend_

He was confused, and in the confusion came anger. He could only blindly strike in his fear and in the confusion this man brought. He wanted it to stop. He wanted the words to stop. He was not James Buchanan Barnes. He was the Winter Soldier.

"Shut up!" he screamed in anguish. In terror and in bewilderment. He could feel the perfect machinery that Hydra had made in his mind breaking down. Grinding and jolting to an unfamiliar rhythm. The rhythm of memory, the rhythm of fear.

What is a friend? He was not a friend, he was a weapon designed to kill, designed to execute the order. He was built in the idea of slavery.

Fear prickled in his empty mind, in his empty soul. Not fear of HYDRA but fear of this man. An old fear stirs. Fear for the loss of familiarity.

The man said he was not a weapon. What did he want? What was he trying to do?

So he forced himself to knock down the man. He smashed his fist into the man's face because he was scared. Because he knows he must be a weapon, and the pain would come again if he did not complete his mission. Because this man wouldn't fight back and if he hurt him enough he must.

And maybe if he punched hard enough, the pain would leave, the fear would leave. Maybe if he punched hard enough, he could just forget again, and go back to that numbing emptiness. Maybe if he punched hard enough, the man would actually fight back, like the rest of them would have.

Six blows he delivered. The man still did not fight back. The Winter Soldier was scared. He hesitated.

_I'm with you till the end of the line. _

His mission was gone. He was broken again. He had become a useless tool, a shattered weapon. He had been bent again, crushed again. This time by a bloodied face, compassionate eyes, by tears, by kindness. He has been destroyed again by gentleness. By pain again. A burning pain in the Winter Soldier's mind. The man had taken away his nothingness and replaced it with humanity. Humanity was painful. And that spark that was the boy from Brooklynn woke up and burned him one last time.

_You are not a weapon! You are a human!_

The spark had screamed into the hollowness of the Winter Soldier's mind, lighting up each dark corner end to end, searing him with unspeakable pain.

The man had fallen.

_Your name is James Buchanan Barnes_

His name was James Buchanan Barnes. No, he was the Winter Soldier. He had been captured and broken again by a face from a memory which should have been wiped with the rest. Wrecked by pleading words which brought a pain which should have left when they scraped him clean.

The man fell and the Winter Soldier fell after him, faster and faster down into the water. He had already failed the mission, but he dragged the man to shore.

The man moved and he left.

* * *

He was forged in a river of blood and fire. An inferno of lies and destruction. A turning, whirring machine that knew how to take but could not restore.

He was a tool. He was a machine. He had been the fist of Hydra.

The man had said different.

He was a useless tool, a defective machine. He was broken. He was a ghost.

He was a ghost wandering slowly back to humanity. Flickering slowly between fear and pain and confusion.

He saw his face on a glass monument. He was…

He was…

He is Bucky Barnes.


End file.
